


Rivalry

by thedevilchicken



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Alcohol, Competition, Developing Relationship, First Time, M/M, Post-Canon, Rivalry, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 12:11:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11851326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Ice has always liked to be the best at everything he does.





	Rivalry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arysteia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysteia/gifts).



Tom Kazansky has always liked to be the best at everything he does. Everything's a test he can ace. Everything's a competition he can win. It's always been the same. 

He was the same way growing up back east. His mom has a box full of his old plaques and old trophies and albums full of photographs he hasn't looked at in years because winning was the part that mattered, not all the ephemera that came with it. He was the captain of his high school swim team and played volleyball at the beach in the summer, and he didn't always win but he almost always did. He graduated top of his class and had no trouble securing his place at Annapolis. No one was surprised at all.

The academy was just another kind of competition. He aced every test, beat every record, passed every inspection with flying colors: his buckles and his buttons and his shoes were shined, his scores were near-perfect, his conduct with peers and his superiors was completely beyond reproach. He worked hard to be the perfect, squared-away midshipman, almost without seeming to though that has always been part of the hard work, the part that earned him his call sign before he ever really needed one. When he graduated top of his class, no one was surprised at all. Honestly, neither was he. 

Pilot training was another test, and then so was Top Gun. He'd had rivals before - competition was nothing without rivalry, after all - and honestly, Maverick wasn't the worst of them, or the best of them, or even the most frustrating of them that he'd ever been up against. _Maverick_ was just another name in a list that he was sure he'd forget because winning was what mattered, not the people that he beat. But afterwards, the name stuck with him longer than the others. He hadn't expected that, and Ice was rarely surprised. 

He stayed on at Top Gun after graduation and took a place as an instructor; it suited him, he thought, because teaching was just another kind of test and it was one he hadn't taken. He flew almost daily when they had a class in session and that was satisfying, pitting himself against the best of the best and coming out on top. His father had been Navy just like Maverick's, though without the tragic end, and surpassing all his expectations was another kind of competition, too. 

Then Maverick came back to Miramar. 

Ice told him he thought they could work together and Maverick laughed out loud at that then grinned as he agreed. It turned out he'd been stationed on a carrier for the fourteen months after their Top Gun graduation and then here and there for the two whole years that followed. He still hadn't gotten any more disciplined in all that time, but Ice was pretty sure he could work with that; Maverick was the living example of what _not_ to do in combat, after all, while Ice was the textbook in action. So they flew together, single-seat Skyhawks hanging off each other's wing and picking the class off one by one, and they taught together, tactics and theory and all those things Maverick had always seemed to have such complete disdain for but still knew inside out. It worked. It was frustrating on a daily basis, they argued in the locker room and nearly came to blows in their classroom once class was dismissed, but it worked somehow. 

But the competition was still there between them, just like it always had been. They competed in the air: highest number of missile locks won. They competed on the beach, volleyball, teams drawn from classes or just one-on-one, and even the three years that'd passed hadn't dulled the edge or put out the spark of the thing between them. Maverick pushed him, and so Ice pushed back. They made each other crazy, but they made each other better. 

Maverick drank in the bar with the class like he was their friend and not their instructor and Ice decided that, at least, was _not_ a competition - at least not one that he wanted to win so Maverick could have it by default. He watched them from a booth across the room, a few nights into their second class's time at Top Gun, sitting there in his whites like all the rest of them though not absolutely certain why he'd come. It reminded him of their class and the terrible singing and Charlie who'd moved away and moved on and apparently left Maverick behind, or maybe it was the other way around and honestly, he's never asked. And then there Maverick was, bringing him back to the present with that stupid grin all over his idiot face, throwing himself onto the seat opposite him across the table. 

"Y'know, you drinking alone is a pretty sad and sorry sight," Maverick told him, half-drunk already or maybe more, and he put two glasses down on the tabletop and he pushed one across it to Ice. Ice eyed it for a moment, then took it and he sipped; the whiskey was cheap, but he'd tasted worse. 

"So, you're here to save me from myself?" Ice asked. 

Maverick shrugged, that expansive way only the drunk and the arrogant can do, and Maverick was maybe both right then. "Something like that," he said. "You really need to lighten up."

"And when I want your advice, I'll ask for it," Ice replied. "Don't expect that to be soon."

Maverick laughed and knocked back his whiskey and then he left the table, pushing off like a runner from the blocks; Ice didn't expect him back but three minutes later or maybe less there he was again, more drinks in hand. And Ice couldn't let him get away with it, something in him just wouldn't let it lie, and so he drank when Maverick drank. Maverick raised his brows. He went back to the bar. He bought more. 

At some point, it occurred to them to leave the bar and grab a cab to take them back to Maverick's place if they were going to continue - apparently even Maverick had enough common sense in him that getting falling-down drunk in front of their students sounded like a bad idea so they did that behind closed doors instead. There was an unopened bottle of shitty tequila sitting on Maverick's kitchen counter and they drank it standing there stubbornly, like it was a test, like it was some kind of fucking competition. They swigged from the bottle and passed it back and forth like idiots at high school party just waiting to see who'd puke or pass out first. Neither of them did, though Ice still suspects that was some kind of miracle.

When Maverick put down the bottle and stepped up closer to him, Ice took it as a challenge. He took it as a test and so he didn't move away though good sense and self-preservation told him that he should. When Maverick kissed him, when Maverick pushed him up to the kitchen counter and pressed his tequila-tasting mouth to his, he took it as a test and he kissed him back. When Maverick started to unbutton his shirt, Ice lifted his hands and he unbuttoned Maverick's faster. Ice was the first one up the stairs though he had no idea where he was going. He was the last to come, on his knees in the bed with Maverick's hand around his cock. And in the morning, both of them nursing hangovers the size of of the north Atlantic fleet and pretending like they weren't, they both cooked - it pained him to admit what Maverick made was better, so he figured he'd just have to improve. It was madness, maybe, but strategic retreat just didn't seem like an option.

Maverick invited him over two nights later and like it was some stupid game of chicken they were playing, or at least Ice remembers knowing he couldn't say no. They played cards at the dining table with a semi-pornographic deck that was maybe meant to knock him off his game but didn't and they drank what was left of the shitty tequila, and when they went to bed, Ice lasted longer inside Maverick than Maverick did in him.

In the morning, Maverick dug a new toothbrush out of the medicine cabinet for him and they made out minty-fresh in the shower, bare skin on skin, like it was a test of who was best. Ice's fingertips teased down between Maverick's cheeks and Maverick groaned against his mouth; Ice went down on his knees under the spray and teased Maverick's cock with his tongue while he teased his hole with his fingers, Mav's fingers twisting tight in his hair. They went back to bed after and Maverick went down on his hands and knees. Ice slicked himself up with the lube from Maverick's nightstand and he pushed into him in slow stop-starts, held him at the waist and rocked his hips to get a little deeper. The way Maverick groaned into the pillow and pushed back against him, the way he practically fucked himself on the length of Ice's cock, somehow that didn't feel competitive. Ice figured maybe he just didn't get the game that they were playing. He figured he'd keep at it till he figured it out.

Three nights later, he was back again for another try, and two nights after that. Maybe Ice's cooking didn't improve, but the sex did. It was a satisfying rivalry. 

Their current class graduated and another arrived. It went on. They pushed each other. They flew together. They taught together. They went back to Maverick's place and they slept together, him and the only rival he'd never been able to forget like he'd forgotten the others, till the way he pressed Maverick to the bedroom wall and kissed his mouth and stroked his cock was less about the competition than it was about the way it felt. Their arguments turned into makeouts turned into service whites with buttons lost or flight suits shoved right down to their knees and Maverick bent him over a desk and fucked him standing, or Ice teased Maverick's hole with slick fingers till he cursed more like a sailor than a naval aviator and begged him to fuck him, so he obliged. When they went to bed, they made it last. When Maverick smiled that lazy, infuriating smile, Ice just smirked right back and turned off the light. 

It's been years. They followed the program from Miramar to Fallon, through two promotions, and they kept coming back through seven postings overseas. Sooner or later they were always back there, in a room together behind closed doors away from prying eyes, hands in each other's hair, bare skin on each other's skin. And along the way, he's realized Maverick's not his rival: the only rival he's ever really had is his own goddamn stubborn self. It's what's made him good. It's what's made him who he is. The only rival he's ever really had is just himself, so second place has been forgettable; Maverick is not second place.

Somewhere along the way, he realized what they have is not a competition. Maverick's finger's wrap around his cock, Maverick's mouth finds his, and that is not a competition. 

He thinks maybe this is the one thing in his life that doesn't have to be.


End file.
